Light Among The Dark

• Ailsa Freeman, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2015

You sit there at the edge of a lake, a writer, in search of ideas. The expanse of water stretching out before you, filled with all manner of marine life. This is your mind, and every living thing, your thoughts. Some creatures, spend most of their life swimming near the surface, others, are lost to the depths, never to be thought of again.
You stand, and begin walking into the lake, the smooth pebbles shifting beneath your feet. The water swirls around your ankles, and gradually climbs up your legs, swallowing more and more of your body as you delve deeper into thought. There you wait, waist deep in water with creatures snaking around your limbs, for the perfect idea, to swim your way.
As you gaze into the depths you see a streak of silver glide past, a sliver of light among the dark. Your eyes search frantically, scanning the black abyss below, trying to catch another glimpse of the mysterious creature. There, the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, a fish with scales made of starlight, swimming through the endless night. Its large flowing body moves more gracefully than water itself, and it gradually glides towards the surface.
Slowly, this creature of light flows towards you, and as it gets closer you realise, there is a small patch of scales missing from its side, and in its place is a small cut. It’s bleeding silver blood, blood like starlight, the blood of stories. This creature, a pure being containing the essence that a writer yearns for, is the thing that you have been waiting for. You must catch this beautiful creature, tame it, nurture it, and mould it into the perfect story that you have waited so long to create.
You reach out and grab hold of this large creature, but it’s a wild spirit that has no wish to be contained. It immediately surges forward in an effort to get away from you, it thrashes and writhes about in an attempt to shake you off, but you hold tight, it will not get away from you. It dives down, swimming deeper and deeper, the dark waters and vile tormented creatures of the depths surround you and tear you away from the creature of starlight, which is free once more.
You lie there on the bottom of the lake, pinned down by the writhing mass of creatures that lurk in this endless abyss of night , some of them bad memories, others horrible thoughts that you’ve pushed to the back of your mind. Collectively, they form all the horrible things in your life, things that, stirred up all at once, can kill a man.
They bite, twist and wrap around you in a haze, squeezing the air from your lungs, slowly taking the life from you. In your last moments, you see your wounds. Blood like starlight flows from your scarred and mutilated body...
We are all stories in the end.